Got Matar Community

Got Matar, meaning Bare Hilltop, is an area of dispersed rural settlements in the Sub-County of Bondo in Siaya County in the west of Kenya, near to Lake Victoria. The area is amongst the poorest in Kenya and suffered the highest level of HIV infection in all of Kenya around the turn of the century. AIDS killed off many of the community’s working age population and left over one third of the children living as orphans.
See ‘Two Pandemics

The Got Matar Community Development Group (GMCDG) was formed by local leaders in January 2002 to respond to the crisis. The Group accepted that they had ‘lost a generation’ and that the priority was to assure that their children could all enjoy a decent education.  They first improved conditions in the 10 Primary Schools, then built a Secondary School with 600 places, and are now well advanced in the creation of an Institute of Technology that offers diploma courses in a range of practical skills.

Got Matar
Got Matar
Got Matar
  • Construction of the Business Lecture Hall, IoT

    Construction of the Business Lecture Hall, IoT

    The IoT Business Management Lecture Hall plastering and key work is in progress at its main campus. As in the case of ICT studies, business management course was intended to enhance the employability of current students as well as specialist diploma courses. Both would focus particularly on the training needs of men and women engaging […]

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  • Got Matar Annual Letter – 2023

    Got Matar Annual Letter – 2023

    Dear Friends of Got Matar, This is just to keep you in the picture about things going on in Kenya, which is a great source of pleasure for us! It struck me a couple of months ago that our relationship as donors with the Got Matar Community Development Group had been running well for 21 […]

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The Secondary School

The decision to build the Secondary School and to seek donor funding for this was taken by the GMCDG in September 2006. By the end of January 2007, the first classroom block had been built and furnished, teachers had been recruited and 112 children had been enrolled in Form 1. All the essential classroom buildings were completed on schedule and within budget by 2010, the year in which the first pupils graduated.

The management of the school was passed by the Community to the Department of Education which meets most running costs and employs the staff. Until now external donors have continued to finance a GMCDG-managed programme of bursaries and scholarships to enable children from poor families to attend the school. This will be phased out and replaced by a locally financed programme, funded mainly by former alumni.

The School has an excellent performance record and reputation. It now has 1240 enrolled pupils and, with a current annual intake rate of 400 pupils, extra classrooms and ancillary facilities are desperately needed. GMCDG has accepted the School’s request for help in raising external funds for part of this expansion and is exploring potential new sources of finance for this.

Got Matar secondary school
Got Matar IOT

The Institute Of Technology

From the outset, it was envisaged that the Secondary School should offer some training courses in practical skills, but this could not be fitted into the standard curriculum. In 2012, when the financing needs of the Secondary School began to fall, the Community opened a 2-year diploma course in dressmaking and tailoring and began the registration of the Got Matar Institute of Technology (IoT) as a financially sustainable community-managed institution. Since then, 11 more courses have been added to respond to local demand.

In order to allow the IoT to grow quickly and to reduce risks, all courses were initially run in rented buildings. Since 2017, the IoT has been constructing and equipping purpose-built training workshops on its campus on land provided by the Community. Ten new workshops have been completed and 2 more will soon be opened.

The splendid new computer training centre was opened in January 2022 and two phases of a girls’ hostel have been opened and are fully occupied by 80 boarders. Because of COVID restrictions, IoT diploma course student numbers stalled in 2021 at 230 but have risen to 333 on 2023, of whom 230 are girls.

Donations

The origins of external financial assistance to Got Matar date from Andrew MacMillan’s first visit to Bondo in 2000 in connection with his work with the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). Once GMCDG had been set up, he and his extended family made occasional donations towards upgrading the Primary Schools. In 2006, after his retirement, he accepted the Community’s formal invitation to raise funds for its educational programmes. Rather than set up a new charity, he sought to engage in partnerships for the management of donations with existing registered NGOs with similar goals. Following a fruitful initial partnership with PEAS (Promoting Education in African Schools), which has now built 30 secondary schools in Uganda and 4 in Zambia, we entered into an agreement in 2012 with Ace Africa (UK) as our partner registered charity. It administers funds collected from donors in the UK and elsewhere and transfers them to GMCDG through Ace Africa (Kenya) which operates an impressive community support programme in Western Kenya, including the area around Got Matar. Their staff have been most helpful in sharing their experiences with GMCDG and have assisted in improving its management systems.

In order to assure Euro Zone donors that their gifts to Got Matar will continue to be competently managed, duly issued with receipts and promptly transferred to GMCDG, Salvatore Fabrizio has kindly agreed that the NGO that he founded to support projects in Kenya will, as of now, take over as GMCDG’s Euro Zone partner registered charity.

To read about how to send donations to Got Matar, please read the section on Making Donations:

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